VNU To IMS: 'Vee Own You'

In a move that accelerates VNU's dominance of the U.S. marketplace, the Dutch-based marketing and media research conglomerate Monday announced a deal to acquire health industry researcher IMS Health in for $7 billion in cash and stock. The move is ironic, because until it was spun off as a separate publicly traded company in 1998, IMS as part of a company - Dun & Bradstreet - that also owned Nielsen Media Research and ACNielsen, which are the other core parts of VNU.

The move also decreases expectations that VNU would make another large media research acquisition, something that had been speculated on ever since the company sold off its European directories business last year and raised more than $1 billion in acquisition funds. But the deal indicates that, at least in the near term, VNU will become an even bigger presence in the field of marketing research.

Details of the deal were scheduled to be discussed during a conference call on Monday, along with VNU's first half results, which the company said grew 6 percent in organic revenues. The company said that organic growth rates for each VNU business group were in line with expectations.

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VNU's acquisition of IMS, meanwhile, increases its presence in both the market research field, as well as the U.S. marketplace, where it already derived more than half of its overall revenues, including research sales from ACNielsen and Nielsen Media Research, as well as trade publications like Adweek, Billboard and The Hollywood Reporter.

While the move diminishes the likelihood that VNU will acquire a major media research asset soon, the company has been aggressive starting up new media research ventures, and has options to develop joint ventures with Arbitron in both media and marketing research. Arbitron had been a rumored takeover candidate by VNU, but some observers speculated that any major media research acquisition by VNU in the U.S. might fan antitrust flames. In the past year, Nielsen has been investigated by the Federal Trade Commission and currently is facing an antitrust suit filed by rival erinMedia.

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